Being a theater critic is a constant exercise in navel gazing on deadline in the wee hours of the night. You see a show, and you crank out what you thought of it. Fast. Often overnight. That’s the gig. Only rarely do you have the luxury (sometimes unwelcome) to revisit a play and see how it has changed. Or maybe how you have. Or sometimes both.

The unstoppable ABBA salute “Mamma Mia!,” which sashays into Broadway San Jose on June 3-5, is one such show for me. The first time I saw the kitschy juggernaut, many moons ago during its U.S. premiere in San Francisco, I just didn’t get it. The sing-a-long and shimmy in the aisles vibe made me turn my critical nose up in the air big-time.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the cathartic glory of musical theater, mind you, but I prefer my show tunes attached to a character-driven narrative arc. Themes are also a plus. I’m a sucker for everything from “Sweeney Todd” to “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” but “Mamma Mia” left me perplexed. Total disclosure: I actually walked out at intermission the first time I saw it. For the record, I wasn’t on the clock that night, so I didn’t feel compelled to stick around.

But then the whirligig of time brought its revenge. After my initial great escape, I ended up having to see the musical again and again and again. I went first because it’s my job. It’s the eighth-longest-running show in Broadway history, people! The West End production is now in its 17th year, and the international tour has visited more than 81 cities in 37 countries. That’s a whole lot of “Waterloo.”

Meanwhile, over time, it also turned out to be my mother’s favorite show in the entire world. For birthdays or Mother’s Day or really any time a gift is in the offing, that’s what Mom wants.

In the interests of candor, I’ll admit there were three or four years in there when I simply bought tickets for Mom and one of her pals in order to save myself from sitting through the entire “Dancing Queen” experience. But at the end of the day, that cost far too much “money, money, money.” So, nowadays, I go.

Admittedly, I started out merely grinning and bearing it through those visits to the land of spandex and squealing. But eventually, lo and behold, somewhere halfway through the 12th time I saw the show, the unfettered glee of the folks around me became contagious.

What I didn’t entirely understand about the musical in my hipper-than-thou youth, was that sometimes, life can make you so cynical and exhausted that you are more than happy to shell out some dough (in this case, $128 for a good seat) for something that makes you forget your cares, even if only briefly. If it also makes you spontaneously break out in song and shake your groove thing, so much the better. Narrative depth and literary wit are sometimes optional.

Seeing the show through Mom’s eyes, I realized that feeling good is sometimes more than enough. It can be magical.

For the record, I have also relented somewhat on my anti-“Wicked” stance. But I am holding the line at “Frozen.” I may never let that antipathy go.

With “Mamma Mia!” at least, I am good to go, repeatedly. (And shhh! Don’t tell Mom, but this may well be the final tour.)

My mom is now a senior citizen, and it’s a rare thing indeed to see her bust a move. She even struggles a bit making her way up and down those steep staircases at San Jose’s Center for the Performing Arts. But she will do it, she will make that pilgrimage to the CPA every single time the show rolls into town because it makes her feel better — younger and lighter and fancy free.

That “Mamma Mia!” does all that for her makes it priceless to me. So if you spot me in the audience at the show next week, you now know just how this hater came to see the light.

“There was just something in the air that night, the stars so bright….”

Karen D'Souza is the theater critic for the Mercury News and the Bay Area News Group papers. She is a three-time Pulitzer juror, a former USC/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow and a longtime member of the Glickman Drama Jury and the American Theatre Critics Association. She has a Master's Degree in Journalism from UC Berkeley. She is a Twitter addict (@KarenDSouza4), a fangirl and a mommy and her writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle and American Theatre Magazine.

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